ABSTRACT
It would be wrong to posit a natural or inevitable progression from unwritten to written records. In some fairly complex early societies, writing seems never to have been used; in many societies where written records were introduced for elite purposes, older techniques such as knotted cords or tallies continued to be employed for many centuries, especially by craft-workers and small traders. Wherever written records were adopted, oral modes of communication continued to be esteemed, and writing supplemented rather than supplanted human memory. When written records were an innovation, they could not attract the levels of trust that older methods enjoyed. But as the capability of writing became more apparent and as confidence in it increased, writing was espoused more widely. This chapter examines the value that people in south-west Asia, Egypt, and Greece attributed to written records and the growth of their confidence in the deployment of writing. It explores varying attitudes to the retention and use of written records, and it examines growing expectations that such records would be created, kept, and found useful. Over time, written recording practices were adopted by other individuals besides the governing elite, although record-making and record-keeping in early societies almost certainly never reached the very poorest.
